Crain Communications says it will fold BtoB magazine into Advertising Age in 2014

The industry trade magazine BtoB is being discontinued as a separate title and will be folded into Advertising Age, Crain Communications announced today. The consolidation will occur starting January 1, 2014.

“B2b and consumer marketers are increasingly using similar tools and wrestling with the same challenges, so it just made sense to have a single marketing publication,” Rance Crain, president of Crain Communications, said in the online announcement. “We think we can do a better job if we coordinate coverage of all marketing under one brand, with one strategy.”

Another associated title, Media Business, has been on hiatus during the summer and will presumably be shuttered permanently by this move.

The merging of titles by Crain is the latest bad news to hit the B2B media business. B2B ad pages, as measured by the ABM, are down over 9 percent so far this year, after ending 2012 down by the same amount.

The B2B media association itself faced a merger when it announced in April that it would become a division of the Software & Information Industry Association.

To further the conversation and to learn more, check out the Slack and Company blog to read an appeal and letter to Rance Crain from our CEO, Gary Slack, in an effort to keep the BtoB media brand and properties in business – http://bit.ly/16bsjMK.